I especially love the bit in "Tubular Bells Pt 2" where he plays the really slow, ambient bit:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtaBSzk3FvE[/youtube]
41:54-47:10

Schenker just ripped my heart out

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hzruk1ggIw[/youtube]

I'm listening to the Blue Cheer album that made them famous for the cover of Summertime Blues. Leigh Stephens should be removed from the list entirely.

Solo starts at 2:14.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDz9vCbhdnk[/youtube]

that was fucking painful.

Stephens mainly is credited for being a forerunner to metal guitar, certainly not for being an exceptional player.
I agree he's not the best, but Blue Cheer is awesome at any rate.

That's up there with "I Heard Her Call My Name" for the most unbearable guitar solos I've ever heard.

Forerunner of metal? The MC5 were awesome. Overrated as players, mainly because of Wayne Kramer's brilliant self-promotion, but they were an awesome band. Blue Cheer is an oddity.

It's an entirely different kind of pain.

it's not the solo itself that is horrible, but the fact that time is displaced so awkwardly opposite the rhythm section...

Not just that the solo is horrible, because the solo is still pretty horrible.

It was absolutely dreadful, but I imagine many music journalists and 'rock historians' could write big articles about it, finding no fault in its remarkably sloppy and stumbling execution.

Of course they're an oddity, that doesnt mean they couldn't have been an early influence to metal. They were even featured in a few metal documentaries.

I'm not singing their praises as if they're the greatest thing since Cream or Led Zeppelin, but I dig them.

And MC5 I think were much more influential to punk than metal.

In terms of just guitar, Link Wray and maybe even Johnny Guitar Watson were both pretty aggressive. In terms of ensemble group work, I'm not sure....

I've started uploading some of my favourite Lane, Johnson, Malmsteen and Holdsworth bootlegs to my Dropbox. If anyone's interested, send me a PM and lemme know. The Lane ones are mostly from the '95 and '96 tours, the Johnson ones are mostly from around 1990, the Malmsteen ones are '80s gigs, and the Holdsworth bootlegs are '80s and '90s.

These contain what I consider to be some of the finest guitar playing ever recorded. Your mileage may vary.

Leigh Stephens was in Rolling Stone's original 100 greatest guitarists list, so you would be right. Music journalists tend to hate on more technical bands like prog and metal bands while praising bands with a primal and reckless sound, hence the status of many punk, alternative and garage bands as critical darlings.

Blue Cheer are often cited as a proto metal band but they're really more of a precurser to punk rock, and in all likelyhood more punk bands probably cite them as an influence than metal bands.

I like that first album of theirs to be honest. The appeal of this kinda music is that it does sound like a trainwreck, Rock N' Roll for many is a break from sophisticated stick up your ass music so the messier and more heretical the sound the better. Sloppy garage bands were nothing scarce back then granted but their energy and attitute was definitely ahead of it's time.

If he does get removed from this list btw I hope it will at least be based on a more substantial reason than "Well he sucks". If I ran this list and that was my criteria Malmsteen would be gone immediately.